Plextor Gets Serious In the US with USB 3.0 Blu-ray Writer

It looks like Buffalo is not the only IT company showing some activity on the optical disk drive market, as Plextor has also made a move, in the US, in the form of a Blu-ray burner equipped with the latest USB interface.

On the market of optical disk drives, many DVD and Blu-ray drives are roaming, with or without scribing capabilities.

One might say that Blu-ray combo drives, which can read all sorts of disks but can only write up to DVDs, are among the most common on the worldwide market.

Then again, with even BDXL disks and drives coming out, one can be sure that full-blown Blu-ray scribers will get more widespread.

That said, Plextor came out and provided one that easily fits into the high-end, external storage drive market.

While not featuring support for BDXL disks (which can have 100 GB or 128 GB), it does have what it takes for writing on dual-layer, 'regular' disks.

In other words, the newcomer can burn up to 50 GB worth of virtual data, which isn't that bad, considering that it is a full half of what the newest format can manage (in its basic form anyway).

The USB 3.0 interface, with a theoretical maximum throughput of 5 Gbps, will allow tasks to be accomplished quite swiftly.

"We are excited to offer a transportable all-in-one Blu-ray device to consumers," said Christine Hsing, Marketing Manager at Plextor.

"The PX-LB950UE lets you connect to any computer with USB or eSATA connection making access to Blu-ray technology a breeze."

Set to sell for $239.99 when it gets listed, if it hasn't already, the 12x Plextor PX-LB950UE, as it is called, can play 3D media and has 8MB buffer. Finally, it can actually convert 2D media into 3D and, for those that don't have USB 3.0, boasts an eSATA port too.